George Pelecanos - Shoedog

Randolph ignored Gorman, looked back at Constantine. “Motherfucker’s a glue head. You know that?”

Constantine hit the stairs and said, “I figured it was something.”

The meeting had been set up in a room adjacent to Grimes’s office at the top of the stairs. When Polk saw Randolph enter, he rose from his chair, crossed the room, and held Randolph by the arm, looking in his eyes as they talked. Constantine could see that the two of them had worked together before.

The room had two rows of metal folding chairs facing an easel and desk. A coffee urn and setups had been placed to the side. Weiner sat on the edge of the desk at the head of the room, one foot on the floor.

Valdez sat in a chair in the second row, staring ahead, sipping his coffee. Gorman entered, grabbed an ashtray off the coffee table, and had a seat next to Valdez. Jackson sat in the second row as well, away from Valdez and Gorman. He picked at his thumbnail with his metal file.

Constantine poured black coffee and took it, along with an ashtray, to a seat in the first row of chairs, where Polk and Randolph had settled. Constantine dropped the ashtray, along with his smokes and matches, on the seat next to Polk, and sat to the right of that. Polk shook a smoke out of the deck, struck a match to his, leaned across the seat, and lighted Constantine’s.

“Thanks for picking up Randolph,” Polk said, smoke dribbling from his mouth. He winked. “Get along all right with the girl?”

Constantine brushed that away. “I left your car downtown, Polk, out on the street.”

“Don’t sweat it.” Polk made a short head movement to his right, in the direction of Randolph. “His man will feed the meter, make sure it doesn’t get towed. We’ll pick it up later.”

The door opened and then closed behind the men. Grimes entered, took a seat in a large chair-the only one with arms and upholstery-at the back of the room. No one turned around. Weiner moved off the desk and stood next to the easel. Constantine heard a match strike and afterward the pleasant aroma of fine cigar drifted toward the front of the room.

Weiner checked his wristwatch, cleared his throat. “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

Constantine pigeonholed Weiner: an old, bookish hipster-the hipster tag came from the goatee and the cocked beret Weiner sported on his bald head-with three rings on one hand. A small-time gambler, no casino action, a backroom poker player or maybe a pony romancer. Constantine could picture the guy at the track, standing under the odds board, head down, specs low-riding his nose, his hand gripping a stubby pencil, drawing circles on the racing form.

Weiner picked a wooden pointer off the coffee table, draped it shotgun style across one arm. “Two liquor stores,” he said, “this Friday, on opposite ends of town. Two three-men teams. Each team has two inside men, and a driver. The first hit goes down at eleven-fifteen, the second at eleven-thirty.”

“Talk about the teams,” Valdez said.

“I’ll get to that,” said Weiner. He tapped the end of the pointer to the diagram on the easel. “The first hit is Uptown Liquors, on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue, just north of Brandywine, past where Forty-first splits off. It’s your basic market-style setup, except for the counter”-Weiner pointed-“right here. Two cameras point down at the counter. Alarm buttons underneath. Next to the counter, the stockroom.”

“Describe the staff,” Polk said.

“Three Jewish gentlemen,” Weiner said. “They stay behind the counter. An old lady works part-time. And there’s an African-American gentleman, a stockman, does the heavy work.”

“Guns?” Valdez grunted.

Weiner shook his head. “I don’t think so. Nothing out front, anyway. They’ve never been touched, not in that neighborhood. If there’s heat in there, it’s coming from the back-the stockman’s the one to watch.”

Jackson nodded, thought of Isaac. As usual, the hymie had it nailed.

Valdez said, “What kind of take?”

“I put it at a hundred grand, in three separate spots from what I could make out, all under the counter, with a little in the registers. They keep the Thursday deposit out, combine it with Friday’s. They need cash up there for money orders, their own payroll. And to line their own pockets. Friday’s the day they skim their nontaxable income. Which I figure, from what the gentlemen are driving, is four times the amount they declare.”

“So we just stroll in,” Gorman said. “Right? Is that what you’re saying, Weiner? I mean, it’s that easy. And we wear stockings on our faces, on account of the cameras, and we raise our voices a little, and we walk with a hundred grand. And all we got to worry about is some old spade-I mean, African-American gentleman -who works in the back room.”

Randolph turned in his seat, spoke slowly to Valdez. “You tell the little bitch to watch his mouth, hear?”

Valdez grinned, gave Randolph the once-over.

Gorman said, “Maybe after this, you and me take it outside.”

“Maybe,” Randolph said. “Soon as you pull your head out of that glue bag.”

Polk laughed while Constantine butted his cigarette. Grimes dragged on his cigar, watching the bunch from the back of the room. Jackson kept his eyes clear and ahead, thinking of Randolph, the driver: he was down but just too sensitive. This here was only business.

Weiner said, “If the Uptown job’s too simple for you, Gorman, then you’re in luck. You’re not on that team. You’re on the second hit, at eleven-thirty.” He turned the page back on the easel to reveal another diagram. “EZ Time Liquors, on the northeast corner of Fourteenth and R.”

Randolph said, “Talk about it.”

Weiner shifted his weight “As you can see, this is a small place, about eight thousand square feet. Liquors, beers, a small selection of fortified wines. And convenience store items, inner city style-condoms, dream books, disposable lighters, a numbers machine-that sort of thing.” Weiner pointed to a small square in the right area of the store. “Here’s the counter where the staff stand. Two Irish gentleman, father and son, and another Irishman, older, an uncle I’d guess. Hard guys, all of them.”

“Guns,” said Valdez.

“All over the place,” Weiner said. “No plexiglass between the customers and the staff. The Irishmen wear vests under their shirts. I figure each one of them’s got access to a gun behind that counter. Also, I’ve been in the place on two separate days, and on both occasions I saw the same newspaper spread out-same date, same edition-under the left register. I figure there’s a sawed-off underneath the paper.”

“So they’re heeled,” Polk said. “What’s the take?”

Weiner smiled, made a victory sign with his fingers. “Two hundred grand.”

Polk thought it over. “That’s why the hits are staggered, fifteen minutes apart. You make some noise uptown, where they don’t hear that kind of noise too often, and you draw all the units up that way, and then you make the jackpot hit down on Fourteenth and R. Am I right?”

“Precisely,” Weiner said.

Constantine put fire to another smoke, heard Gorman do the same. Everyone stared at the diagram then, all of them considering the alternate weight of money and death.

Constantine exhaled, blew a jet of smoke across the room. “Why not just rob a bank?” he said.

Gorman snorted a laugh while Valdez shifted his wide ass. Jackson moved his eyes to the right but did not move his head.

“What’s mat?” Weiner said. He had not expected the young man with the long hair and blue eyes to speak.

“Why not rob a bank?” Constantine repeated. “I mean, you’re going in there against more guns man you’ve got, and these guys are protecting their own turf, so why not hit a place that’s got one uniformed gun, a security guy, a guy who’s got nothing at stake?”